The world champion Circus is preparing to go on vacation after one of the most exciting races of the season, a perfect summary of the first months of the new technical cycle that has undoubtedly reinvigorated the dynamics of the race. In Budapest there have been continuous reversals of the front, with the projections for the victory constantly evolving lap after lap and with five drivers as concrete candidates for success. Once again Red Bull and Max Verstappen emerge as winners, able to realize a comeback on one of the most difficult overtaking tracks of the entire championship. It doesn’t matter if the gaps or mistakes of the competition contributed to the final success: when a driver-car pairing starts from the tenth place, it accumulates more than ten seconds of delay from the top and crosses the finish line in first position with an equally conspicuous advantage. then it means that something extraordinary has been done. A performance, that of Budapest, destined to become a race that stands out and that will be remembered in Verstappen’s career.
Much of the outcome of the Hungarian Grand Prix was decided even before the traffic lights went out, with the choice of tires for the start. Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton opted to start with medium tires, a compound less prone to graining than the soft one on a cold track and made green by the rain that fell in the morning and even earlier on Saturday, with the possibility of extending the stint and be more flexible towards the weather. On the other hand, Mercedes preferred the softer compound for George Russell, giving priority to the need to defend the first position in the stop shot and then to anticipate the stop so as to avoid the risk of undergoing an undercut. The red compound used by Verstappen, on the other hand, is mainly attributable to an aggressive comeback strategy, securing a big rubber advantage to quickly get the better of the mid-pack competition. However, Pierre Gasly’s departure from the pit lane with soft rubber was already an indication of how the choice for the compound of the first stint was not dictated solely by defense strategies at the start or comeback, but by the desire to lengthen the subsequent stages of the race. to the initial one.
In the very first stint, another conspicuous part of Verstappen’s success was decided. The RB18 once again proved to be extremely fast in warming up the tires, not fearing the risk of graining on a green track, while the Ferrari drivers were again forced to take a cautious approach in the very first laps in order not to run the risk of “tearing ” tires. The world champion so quickly overtook the various Alonso, Ocon and Norris, containing the gap from the summit just over ten seconds. At that point, after the first stop, the Dutchman was able to take advantage of the free track having returned well behind the Alpines to push so as to halve the gap from Sainz and Russell, thanks to the ineffective tire changes and the time lost in overtaking on Ocon. . Leclerc instead extended by five laps before stopping in turn to prevent Verstappen’s undercut because, although the Ferrari race was not on the Dutchman, it was important to keep the position to ensure the road is free and not to be limited in one’s race pace. .
After a central static fraction and with the same compound, Verstappen benefited from having already unmarked the soft tire at the start so as to mount the average again thirty laps from the checkered flag, putting the Ferrari wall in a difficult solution. With almost half of the race still to be played and with the impossibility of recovering the averages, there were three options: to react immediately by opting for the soft ones, with the unknown, however, on their holding for thirty laps; lengthen the stint and then mount the soft so as to take advantage of the compound advantage, a strategy adopted by Sainz and Hamilton; react promptly with the hard to defend the position make sure you reach the finish line without further stops. However, the harder compound proved to be excessively slow, as already anticipated by the times of the two Alpines, while the difficulties of getting up to temperature by the F1-75 certainly did not facilitate the defense of Charles Leclerc. Verstappen was thus able and had to implement two overtakes to the detriment of the Monegasque, interspersed with a spin in the third sector, which, although partly connected to the clutch and gearbox problems on the RB18, remains a Dutch mistake. This is the second driving inaccuracy of the season for the world champion, following the long gravel of Turn 4 in the victorious Barcelona race. Thus the calculation of the errors between Leclerc and Verstappen is equalized, although the different outcomes have differently influenced their respective rankings. An observation in which the ill-thinkers will see some malice, but which testifies how even the Dutchman, albeit with an exceptional performance, is not free from flaws, and which invites us to alleviate the criticisms addressed to the Monegasque for retiring in France.
The Budapest race was held in track and temperature conditions for which data were not available, having held Friday free practice in hot conditions and Saturday morning’s PL3 in wet conditions. With the same information available, however, Red Bull and Mercedes were more skilled than Ferrari in reading the situation and adapting both the assets and the strategies. In this regard, making strategic choices in the race has always been and will continue to be an extremely complex job, as it implies an attempt to predict the future evolution of the track, of the opponents and of the tire performance, in order to make the best decisions. During the season Mattia Binotto has always defended the strategies of the Ferrari wall, defining them correct on the basis of the data available. Therefore, even more than on the interpretation of the data, potential margins for improvement emerge in their collection and preparationto build those models essential to predict the performance of the car-tire package, anticipating the evolution of the track and extrapolating information even when these are not directly available.
Regardless of the strategy, however, in the stages of the race with the same tire Red Bull has proven to be far better performing than the F1-75. On the eve of Mattia Binotto, on the strength of the feedback in the potential of the car, announced a double that in all probability would have been within reach if the conditions had remained those of Friday. After France it was said that the Red was the fastest car, but Budapest highlighted how this superiority can be undermined by some factors, one above all the low temperatures, but not only. The Hungaroring race thus underlines once again how much the potential of a car must be concretized by an adequate preparation of the set-up, a task never taken for granted and capable of upsetting the initial predictions, as already happened for example in Imola. In any case, Budapest becomes a great learning opportunity for Ferrari to better interpret similar scenarios in the future. Everything follows the lines of what happened after the 2021 French Grand Prixthe worst annual performance of the Red, which however marked a drastic reversal in the management of the graining and in the tuning.
The Frecce d’Argento closed in second and third position one of the best weekends since the beginning of the year. Russell’s first pole position is flanked by Lewis Hamilton’s comeback from seventh to second place, just as commendable immediately after Verstappen’s. The drop in temperatures helped to report Mercedes in the correct operating window, but it would be reductive to bring the second consecutive double podium of the Star back to the weather conditions, given that the W13 has often suffered from problems of warming up in cool conditions. Thus, the change in the set-up made on the night between Friday and Saturday, called into question by Russell and defined by him as “top-secret”, assumes greater importance. The W13 continues to be the protagonist of huge leaps in performance, but if the team definitively identifies the way of setting up to consciously enhance its potential, without repeatedly retracing its steps, the technical gap from the top would be significantly shortened. At that point, the delay would become bridgeable in the winter and then present itself in 2023 with serious world championship ambitions, while even earlier by the end of 2022 the long-awaited victory could come. Going beyond the car, however, the Brackley team deserves credit for having always capitalized on every single opportunity, reaching 30 points behind Ferrari in the championship and targeting a second place that seemed unthinkable at the beginning of the season.
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